


Charcoal

by ms_qualia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Feels, Shameless Smut, Smut, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:31:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5993314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms_qualia/pseuds/ms_qualia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey agrees to model for a figure drawing class for a little extra cash.  She didn’t expect to see him there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Charcoal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AquaWolfGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquaWolfGirl/gifts).



Poe called Rey to say he was running late, so she had to open the shop by herself.

She brought the bundle of newspaper in, placed it on the counter where they kept the papers and cut the cord holding them together. There was one unsold the previous night. Poe had forgotten to leave it for the paper guy. She’d remind him when he came in.

She didn’t mind taking the chairs down. She liked the feeling of swinging a chair up and how bringing it back down shuddered up her arm.

Her least favorite job from opening was the lemons. Lifting the heavy press, centering the lemon below the blades, dropping it and hoping the weight of the press would do the work so she didn’t have to smack the top.

But soon she had her absurd number of cut lemons. And by 6:30, she’d have an absurd number of customers.

At that hour, most were little strange older people or strange middle-aged people.

Or just strange.

Most wanted “coffee.” If you asked them what kind, they’d say, proudly, they didn’t know anything about coffee and didn’t want “anything fancy.” But of course, they did, or did not, want two fingers for cream, or they wanted sugar or to put it in themselves (and in the case of one woman, both). This was the kind of crowd that was hurt if you forgot their order but outraged if you presumed to make it without asking them.

And then there was Ben.

Ben’s age was hard to place. He was not middle-aged, but he was not in his early twenties like Rey. He had thick, dark, slightly wavy hair he wore in front of his large ears. He had this tic where he’d run his fingers through it when he was thinking or annoyed.

He was frequently both. He held a lot of tension in his shoulders and in his face that never quite went away. He walked like he was made of tightly coiled springs. He looked at her like he was angry at something two feet behind her head, always.

He had a full mouth and a large, long nose. He was broad-chested and his arms were long. He wore white shirtsleeves in the summer and a black tailored wool coat over it in the winter.

She had seen him every day she worked mornings for two years. Since January, he'd started wearing a doctor's coat. His life had moved forward. She was still serving coffee. She felt a pang of guilty envy toward him. Broad, tall, tense, and now apparently accomplished.

She had tried describing him to Finn, her roommate, once, trying to explain why she thought of him every morning before he showed up and for a while after he left.

“He sounds ugly,” Finn had said.

Her brow had creased, she hadn’t thought in terms of good-looking or ugly. She thought of his interesting face, his eyes, his skin. “He’s, uh, not,” she’d said. “He’s really not.”

“He sounds strange, though.”

“He’s… no. He just makes me feel something. I just look at him, and it’s like… I can’t even explain it.”

“Okay,” Finn had said.

Ben would always buy a newspaper, with cash, and press the back of his fingernails into her palm before he dropped the coins from his palm. The coffee he bought with a card. They were situated near a medical school, and he occasionally carried a folder with the school’s name embossed on it or a textbook.

He took his coffee with a shot of espresso, so it took a little longer to make his than just pouring a cup for him out of a carafe. He was one of the ones that genuinely did not mind if she started making his order without him saying a word.

He would stare the whole time.

The bell on the door rang, and she knew it was him. He was tall and pushed it a little too hard. In summer, he left great handprints on the glass, but it was February. He wore gloves. No handprints to clean this month.

“Good morning!” she said. She started grinding the beans for the espresso machine.

He dug into his coat pocket for his coins, absent-minded. He spotted something on the wall and frowned.

“Hm?” she said. He glanced down at her. She bent over the counter to see what he was looking at.

Poe had put up a chain of paper hearts around the menu blackboard.

“Oh, yeah. Uh, happy Valentine’s day?” she hazarded.

“When is that?” he said.

“Uh, today, I think,” she said.

This was now, officially, the longest conversation they had ever had. Rey cleared her throat. She scooped the beans out of the grinder, slid down the counter, and tapped them into place to pull through the espresso machine. She pulled the shot into a paper cup.

“I’d like to sit today,” he said.

“Oh? Oh, OK,” she said. She hurriedly poured coffee for him into a mug with enough room for his espresso and dumped the shot in. She walked over to the counter, placed the mug on. He’d already put his card on the counter. She ran and put it back on the counter, then held her hand out. He looked at it.

“No newspaper today?” she asked.

He pulled his right glove off and reached into his pocket, produced the coins. Looking into her face, he pressed each one slowly into her palm.

She felt as if ghostly fingers ran up and down her spine, the same thrill she’d felt every morning for two years. She’d come into work sick before so she wouldn’t miss it. She’d traded shifts with people with lame excuses so she’d be there. She invented evening plans.

As the last coin was pressed into her hand, her fingers closed around it, and his fingertips slipped through.

“S-sorry,” she said. She hit the amount in on the register and put the coins into the tray. He took his coffee and sat. He tried sitting normally for a moment, but his knees nearly bumped the bottom of the table. He slid down and slouched a little.

Rey tried not to stare at him. It was just past that early morning weirdo rush. It was Sunday. It would be two hours or so until the stingy after-church weirdos came.

There was no distinctive crowd not made up of weirdos. It was a place for med students and weirdos, and the overlap between the two.

Someone did come in during that dead time: Poe, her manager weirdo. He looked harried, as ever.

“Sorry,” he said. “Up late grading.”

Poe was an adjunct art teacher at a community college part time. It didn’t really pay the bills, so this was his second job.

He leaned his bike in the open door, took his backpack off, and fished for his uniform shirt.

“Close the door, you’re heating the outside,” said Rey. Poe pulled his uniform shirt over his head, over his long sleeved tee, and walked his bike to the manager’s office.

“I need your approval for something,” said Poe.

“Pretty sure _you’re_ the manager,” she said.

“You’re the assistant manager. I don’t want to abuse my power.”

She glanced around the coffee shop looking for power. She only found Ben at one table, reading, and a woman cutting coupons at one of the booths.

Poe locked his bike in the manager’s office along with his backpack. He came back out with a flier.

“I need to post this.”

“Just post it,” said Rey.

“No, but you should approve it. It’s my flier.”

“You just want me to read it.”

“Yeah, Okay. But I put this up on craigslist and around, and all the people who are calling are weirdos.”

Rey took it out of his hands. She frowned.

“What is this for?”

“My class. Well, help for my class.”

“Which one?” she said.

“Figure drawing.”

“This sounds like you’re shooting a porn.”

“What?”

“‘Models Wanted',” said Rey.

“Yeah, I need a model. Someone to model. It says figure drawing class down here,” he said, pointing at the smaller print at the bottom.

“Lead with ‘figure drawing.’”

“That’s not the most important thing, though.”

Rey sighed and pulled a rag from the sanitation bucket to wipe the counter down.

“How do you teach any kind of composition?” she said.

“Well, I can’t afford to re-print these. My model ditched. I need someone by tonight who isn’t totally weird.”

Rey laughed. “Does it matter if they’re weird?”

“If they make people uncomfortable, yeah. Yeah, it matters. The people who thought this was their break in porn don’t seem to have good personal space when they’re naked.”

“You realize it’s Valentine’s day, right?”

“That’s not a school holiday. I’ve still got class.”

“No, I mean, a lot of the non-weirdos aren’t going to just hang out with strangers for free if they could be with their boyfriends or whatever instead.”

“You don’t have a boyfriend,” said Poe.

Rey looked up from the counter. She glanced between Ben and Poe. Ben did not give any indication he could hear.

“Wow,” she said. “You are really asking this. There are like, eight ways I could sue you right now.”

“Oh, come on. It pays.”

“No.”

“Two hundred,” he said. “Hour and a half. You can bring a book.”

Rey thought of all she could use two hundred dollars for.

“I don’t know anyone there?” she said.

She shook his head. “No. No. Nobody in our circle’s taking it.”

“I keep my panties on.”

“Yeah, sure.”

The door rang, and they looked up.

Ben had gone. He’d left his newspaper folded, but his coffee only half-drained.

—

Rey got the address from Poe before she got off work. She felt a little too nervous to eat dinner before the evening class. She put on two pairs of underwear under her clothes so she wouldn’t feel completely exposed.

She steeled herself at the front door.

“Where you off to?” shouted Finn from the kitchen.

“I, uh, have a thing.”

“A date?”

She shook her head. “Not really.”

“Don’t mess around with dudes who don’t do labels on Valentine’s day,” said Finn, peeking out. “Serious mixed signals. Oh, and make him pay for dinner, the electric’s overdue.”

“I’ll remember that,” she said.

—

She arrived ten minutes early like Poe asked. They didn’t have a changing room. Poe had put construction paper over the little windows of the classroom door. There was a stool in the middle of a circle of desks and a robe on it, and a hanging lamp overhead, a little to the side.

“Can I wear the robe?”

“The robe is so we’re not just staring at you while class starts up and winds down. You know? That’d be weird.”

He turned away while she unbuttoned her shirt.

“I swear to God, if you go creeper on me, I will sue you so hard,” she muttered.

“I got it. No creeping.”

She slid her corduroy pants down her legs, and as she did the merely cool classroom became decidedly chilly. The hair on her thighs stood on end.

“Can’t you turn the heat up?”

“Sorry. The basement classrooms don’t have their own thermostat.”

She removed her bra and put the robe on. She took a moment to fold her clothes and put them under the stool, between its spindly legs.

Students started trickling in. To Rey’s relief, the first three in the door were women. One of them was older, middle aged. She stiffened a little at a studious young man, but after he glanced at her, he seemed a lot more interested in setting up his sketch pad, pencil, and charcoal than in her. By the time most of the seats were taken, it was mostly women, mostly studious looking or indifferent.

And then Ben walked in, pad under his arm. He spotted her and stopped. A short redheaded girl waited for him to move for a long moment. Annoyed, she squeezed past him.

Rey stood. Poe was chatting happily with the middle aged lady.

“Poe,” said Rey. She crept over and tugged his sleeve.

“Hm?”

“Ben.”

“Ben?” He looked at the door, then back at Rey. Rey and Ben stared at one another. Rey flushed.

“Do you know each other?”

“He’s a regular.”

“Yeah, that’s how he heard about the class, we talk when he gets coffee.”

Rey opened her mouth, stunned. “He’s— you’re friends? He’s friendly?”

“Well, no. I had to talk his ear off for six months before he’d say ‘hi.’ We’ve just hung out twice. Anyway, I texted him, he said you’d never even talked.”

She felt her cheeks burn. She’d thought he was just quiet, and he was. But that was not why they’d never had a conversation in two years. Two long years of his fingers touching hers and running a little shock up her spine.

He just didn’t want to talk to her.

“Did you tell him I’d be doing this?”

“No, but —”

“I have to see him every day.”

Poe frowned. He clearly hadn’t thought of that.

She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and stalked back to the stool.

“I’m suing.”

“Now?”

“After class. Suing.”

Ben, still in the doorway, made a decision. He rolled his shoulders back, lifted his chin, and strode to the remaining desk. He clipped his sketchpad to the desk and rolled up his white shirtsleeves up to his elbows, exposing his vascular forearms. He opened his case and set out the charcoal.

Poe stood in the center of the desks, near Rey and clasped his hands together.

“Okay, boys and girls,” he clearly liked this joke, although nobody laughed, “we’re continuing with charcoal today. Three quick gesture sketches to warm up, then a long one. Remember to use your paper, I don’t want to see any mini-Reys. This is Rey, by the way. Everyone say ‘hi!’”

“Hi,” the class murmured. Ben did not.

I’ll be around to grade your sketchbooks while you work,” said Poe.

He reached up the pendant lamp’s cord and turned it on, then jogged around the desks and dimmed the lights by the door. He looked over at Rey and nodded, giving her the thumbs up. He pulled his watch-hand up to his face and set a timer.

She took a breath and pulled the robe off of her shoulders, down over her breasts. Her nipples were hard from the cold. She was suddenly aware of every little mole, especially the little one next to her left nipple. A pimple near the base of her spine. The size of her breasts. The little curve of her belly that never had been quite flat. She crossed her hands in front of her belly.

“That’s good,” said Poe. “Stay like that for a little. I’ve got an alarm set.”

She was not faced toward Ben, and she was happy for it. Poe grabbed his grade book and flit from student to student, opened their sketchbooks, glanced through them, and marked whether they’d done something or not done something before moving to the next.

Before very long, the watch timer went off and Poe asked her to change poses. By the third pose, her arms behind her back, chest out, her arms behind her back as if tied there and pinned, a thought began to creep in.

He was looking at her. He had to be. She had no idea where his eyes moved. He could be looking anywhere. She had no way of knowing.

She had absolutely no control.

“Okay, we’re all warmed up. New sheet. Rey, last one, just choose something comfortable. You’re going to hold it for half an hour.”

Rey turned to face Ben and found the most comfortable position, leaned forward, hands on knees, breasts out of his view behind her forearms. He was busy flipping to a new page in his pad. He wiped the excess charcoal off his fingers with a tissue, then glanced up.

His eyes met hers. She breathed in, face hard, defiant. He looked a little startled as if scolded.

It was only her and the bright light and the cold and her heartbeat, and him glancing from her to his paper. He would glance at one part of her or another, and then to her eyes, before looking at the paper.

Poe circled around to Ben. He looked at Ben’s sketchpad, then up at Rey, and frowned. Poe leaned forward and whispered something, then clapped Ben on the back in encouragement. Ben rolled his eyes.

And then it was back to that hypnotic rhythm. Her heartbeat in her belly, swaying her a little back and forth. Ben's eyes moving up and down between her and his sketch pad. His face lit in sharp relief by the lamp hanging above her. She felt like she drifted off, only fully present when his eyes met hers.

Poe’s watch went off. She looked up at him, and he pantomimed putting the robe back on. She looked back at Ben, who looked at her.

She stood, shaking, a little hoping it didn’t show, nude except for her two pairs of panties and her thin veneer of reproachful defiance, looking straight into Ben’s eyes and he into hers. She dared him silently to look her up and down. He would not.

She pulled the robe over her shoulders and across her.

Ben looked away.

Poe passed around a fixing spray so their charcoal drawings would not smudge as he talked about homework for the next class. Rey spaced out, arms crossed, waiting for it to be over. Students slowly filed out. Poe had put his things into his satchel and was just waiting for everyone to leave.

Ben was slower in putting away his things. He stood, last, and hung back.

“Sup?” said Poe. He glanced at Rey and, reading her discomfort, placed himself between herself and Ben. Ben scratched his face and left a tiny line of charcoal by his eye.

“I’d, uh, like to apologize,” said Ben in a low rumble.

“What for?” said Poe.

Ben glanced up at Rey. She clutched the fabric of her robe.

“I’d like to do it in private,” he said.

Poe raised his eyebrows and looked over at Rey. She pressed her lips together between her teeth.

“You’ll see her later,” said Poe. “Right?”

Ben looked down at the floor. “Of course,” he said.

Rey threw her head back, rolling her eyes, and turned away. “No, it’s cool.”

“Hm?” said Poe, reeling around to face her. She was turned away, bent to grab her clothes. She looked behind her and up at him.

Poe had this look, this strange look. Not worried, just… knowing.

Rey blushed.

“You want to… lock up?” said Poe, with just a hint of incredulity.

She looked between Ben and Poe. Ben ran his nails over his right palm. His hand was covered in charcoal. She knew from watching him countless times he wanted to push his hair back, and was restraining himself. His breathing was faster than normal. She swallowed.

“Yeah,” she said. She nodded jerkily.

Poe sighed and pulled his keys out of his pocket. He threaded a key through and around the loop and when it was almost done, walked over to his desk to grab his bag. He put the bag on his shoulder, and, in its place on the desk, he put the key.

“There’s a class here at seven,” he said. “Turn the lights out. Don’t get me in trouble.”

Rey didn’t see him leave. She heard the door click. She and Ben both started at the soft noise.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He turned sideways to pass through the gap between the circle of desks. Rey took a half-step back.

“W-what for?” she said.

“I shouldn’t have come.”

She shrugged. “You, uh, take the class. You didn’t know I’d be here. It’s fine.”

“I suspected. I came anyway.”

She shook her head, her lips pressed into the same polite smile she’d give customers when she told them something was OK when it was not. “I’m sure this won’t change anything. We’re basically strangers.”

“That’s true,” he said. As he took another step, and she another back, she bumped into the back of a desk and grabbed the edge of it with both her hands to steady herself. Her robe fell open, exposing her sternum and belly. She leaned backward, all her weight on her hands.

She could not stand straight. She would bump into his chest if she straightened. He was that close, now. He was massive. She was tall for a woman, but he was tall for anyone.

He didn’t glance down to look at her exposed flesh. He regarded her face with a barely maintained facade of cool restraint. She breathed heavily. Her lips parted. He stared.

He glanced away, and then down at his hands. The pads of his left fingers were sooty, but his right was gray and black, shiny black on the pad of his thumb and the curl of his index finger, where he’d gripped the hardest.

“I’m a mess,” he said.

She nodded.

He leaned forward, he placed his hands on either side of hers on the desk behind her.

“You don’t seem to mind,” he said, as he leaned in.

She shook her head. “I don’t mind,” she said.

His lips touched hers, lightly at first, her breath jerked in. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her up to her tiptoes, taking the weight off her wrists. She leaned into him and suddenly his tongue was in her mouth, teasing hers. She shook and wrapped her arm around his neck to pull him in. He, emboldened, slid his hand down her backside and lifted her onto the desk, then pulled her hips to his roughly. She pulled away from the kiss and gasped. He held her to him with his left hand, grinding into her.

He leaned back a little, to look at her, mouth open, eyes hooded. He pressed the fingertips of his right, sooty hand into her sternum, fingers bent back with the pressure, and spread them slowly as he moved them under her robe, pressing her back, forcing her to lean back on her palms. He slipped the robe off her shoulder as he smeared charcoal across her pale skin. He looked down, frankly, at her breast, and up at her face. He wet his lips.

“You’ve wanted this,” he whispered. “Say you’ve wanted it.”

“I-I— yes.”

“How long?”

“Th-the third time I saw you. Then.”

“The third?”

She nodded. “You forgot your umbrella,” she said.

He’d run into the shop, annoyed. It had been raining. It soaked through his white shirt at the shoulders. He bought a newspaper to shield himself from the rain, took his coffee, and jogged back to the door in a hurry, the muscles of his shoulders visible where they had not been covered by his undershirt. As he'd leaned against the door on his way out, he'd caught the look on her face as she watched him. His eyes had widened, he'd hesitated. But then he was gone.

He'd bought a newspaper every time ever since.

In the present, Ben pulled away, stepping to the side and around her. She sighed in confused protest. He slid his hand under her backside and flipped her over, onto her belly. He pressed against her hips with his again and slipped the robe off of her back. As he rocked his hips into hers, grinding against her, he ran his fingers up her back, into the hair at the nape of her neck, then down to the elastic of her panties.

“Did you think of me?” he asked.

“When?”

“You know when,” he said. He reached around the front of her and ran his fingers over her most sensitive area. She gasped. He gripped her hip with his other hand, pressing his fingers into the hollow.

“I— I want to look at you,” she said.

“I’ll give you what you want.”

With his other hand, he pulled her underwear down, then run his hand back up her back and pressed her down, firm against the desk. She heard him unzip his pants. All she could see were the white cinderblock basement walls and anatomy posters. The muscles of the neck and down into the back. He ran his rough hand up her back, and rested it on her shoulder, holding her tight.

“Is this it?” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“My hands are dirty. You’ll have to help.”

He took her by the wrist and helped her find him, between her legs. He let her go when she found him. He slowly pressed against her entrance, and with her fingers, she helped him slide inside. She groaned, dragging her face down the desk as her back arched. He pressed against her back wall and kept pushing, until all of him was inside of her.

His breath hissed out. He took a moment to catch it.

“If you come first I’ll let you look at me,” he said.

He thrust into her, and she gasped. His anatomy slid between her fingers. He pressed his fingers into her shoulder. She reached up with her other hand spastically, grabbing at his arm as he rocked into her. She lifted her hips up to meet him.

“Careful,” he said. She forced herself to be still, tense from the effort of not rocking back to meet him.

“I could be anyone,” he said.

“Y-you’re not,” she said.

His breath caught in his throat, but he did not slow.

“Who am I?”

“Ben,” she cried, and as she did, she tensed, her vision whiting out, inching away from the intensity of him, but he would not relent. He pressed on, through her climax, and only slowed as she started to relax.

He ran his hands up and down her back for a moment. She felt a chill as the sweat he’d smeared across it met the room’s chill air. Heat radiated off of her. She pulled out, and she sighed in protest. She rolled over, running her fingers through her hair, lifting her head.

He was pulling up his pants. He lifted his arms up to make his shirt fall back over the charcoal smudged waistline. She frowned.

“You— you didn’t come,” she panted.

He glanced up. “Later, maybe,” he said quietly.

She wet her lips, sitting up. Suddenly self-conscious, she covered her breasts with her arms.

“O-oh?”

"I... misread this. What this was," he muttered.

She ran her hand over her mouth, shaking. Absent, mind somewhere else, he gave in to his impulse to run his sooty hand through his hair. He left a smudge at his hairline.

After an eternity, after he caught his breath, he met her gaze.

“It’s, the, uh, fourteenth. I don’t know if you, uh, have plans,” he said. “I didn’t get a reservation. It’ll be a long wait, but I know a place. If you’re not, uh, busy—“

“Yes,” she said. His face fell a little. “I mean— I mean no, I’m not busy.”

He nodded. His eyes darted around the room. He turned, pressed his way between the desks, and gathered up his supplies, taking his sketch pad under his arm.

“I’ll wait outside for you,” he said.

Rey sat for a moment, stunned. She looked down. Her body was streaked with charcoal. She had a fresh bruise on the top pf her thigh, where she'd leaned against the desk. It didn’t hurt, strangely. Her entire body was awash with a warm opiate afterglow.

She had a date for Valentine’s day. It was Ben.

She permitted herself a smile.


End file.
